Pakistan's legal chief urges anti-corruption fight

Pakistan’s reinstated chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry today urged lawyers to help him rid the judiciary of corruption.

He began work yesterday as the head of Pakistan’s judicial system after being deposed by former president General Pervez Musharraf in November 2007.

“After a long time the original court has been restored,” he told lawyers and staff of the Supreme Court in the courtroom today.

“In my opinion, lawyers will have to continue their struggle for dignity of this institution and make it more respectable. I request all of you to come and point out incidents of corruption right from the lower court to the higher court, including myself, in case of any complaint of corruption or misconduct,” he added.

During Mr Musharraf’s tenure the Asian Human Rights Commission said: “The higher courts in Pakistan had failed to respond to the increasing number of abductions and forced disappearances at the hands of the country’s security forces.

“Instead they are in effect acting as accomplices to the perpetrators.”

The commission urged the judges, including the chief justice and the Supreme Court to take a stand against the “systematic denial of human dignity and civil liberties in the country”.

After Mr Musharraf’s military rule ended last year and President Asif Ali Zardari took over, it was expected that the judiciary in the country would be more transparent.

However, president Zardari refused to reinstate the judges sacked by Mr Musharraf and continued with those appointed by the military government, resulting in huge protests.

After a long fight supported by the lawyers and opposition party leader Nawaz Sharif, Mr Chaudhry was reinstated as Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court earlier this month.

Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent leader in the lawyers’ movement and former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan, told the Press Association: “We are happy he is back. Justice Chaudhry’s reinstatement will definitely improve the judicial system.”

The chief justice was illegally suspended from the Supreme Court early in 2007 but later reinstated. After Mr Musharraf declared a state of emergency in the country later that year, Mr Chaudhry quashed the declaration of emergency which led to him being placed under house arrest.

Mr Ahsan said: “It will take time for him to consolidate the judiciary. But he will see the pending cases through.”